


Ranboo's Jumpscare Adventure (or something...)

by dw_fwedewick_heweiden



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Enderman Hybrid Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Injury, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Ranboo-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Swearing, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28951962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dw_fwedewick_heweiden/pseuds/dw_fwedewick_heweiden
Summary: (Despite the title, this is not a crackfic, it's just 1 AM in the morning and I'm running off 3 hours of sleep.)Ranboo goes to the mansion on the hill on a stupid, dumb dare. It gets him in quite a bit of trouble.
Relationships: spooky x being an asshole
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64





	1. i

It was just supposed to be a stupid dare.

The mansion on the hill was the subject of many urban legends; and though people bickered over exact stories, what happened when and how it happened, the general gist of every single story was that the house was haunted. Haunted to absolute shit, in fact.

People were said to disappear forever once they entered the mansion. Eaten, murdered, transported to another dimension, the method varied, but the fact of the matter was that nobody ever came back from the mansion on the hill. Not once they’d entered.

So, of course, that meant that every single teenager in the town had been dared to enter the mansion at least once. Almost no one ever took the dare, of course, too afraid of vanishing, going off to an unknown fate and never being seen again. Those who did take the dare usually never went through with it.

Usually, of course, because Ranboo had taken the dare just a day ago, and now here he stands, at the door to the mansion. Tentatively, he knocks. No one answers. He tries the door, and it’s unlocked, so he lets himself in. He tries not to yelp as the door locks behind him.

Glancing around nervously, Ranboo takes a few hesitant steps toward the center of the room, scanning the walls for danger. A large, curved staircase looms above him, connecting to a small balcony, and a chandelier hangs above. A chill runs down his spine; he attributes it to the house being drafty, even though it’s almost certainly because he’s scared. He reaches the center of the room, the floor creaking under him slightly, and freezes in place.

Now, Ranboo wouldn’t say he’s superstitious. He doesn’t really believe in ghosts, or didn’t, anyway. But what stands in front of him is undoubtedly, 100% a ghost. Dark blue hair floats lightly in the air and frames horrible pale blue skin and a childlike face. It’s floating off the ground, is slightly transparent, echoing voice...oh yeah, and it came  _ through _ the wall. Definitely a ghost.

For a very long, awkward, and heart-stopping moment, Ranboo and the ghost stare at each other. Ranboo waits for the ghost to speak first; the last thing he wants is to die because he was rude to a ghost.

At long last, the ghost speaks. “Huh, you’re new. Didn’t even see you coming,” they (she? Maybe? Ranboo doesn’t want to assume) mumble, giving him an appraising glance. He assumes he probably wasn’t supposed to hear that. “Ahem! Hello! I am Spooky. And this is my home.”

The ghost (Spooky, evidently) stops speaking. Ranboo wonders briefly if it’s for dramatic effect, or if they’re just waiting for him to tell them his name, which he is not going to do because he’s read enough about ghosts to know better than that. (Though he might be confusing them with the fae, there. He’ll have to check his memory journal later. Did he remember to bring it along? He hopes so.)

Seeing as Ranboo has nothing to add, Spooky begins speaking again. “Can you, humble player-”  _ player? The hell does that mean?  _ “- make it through a thousand rooms? Can you find what lies at the end? Is there even an end? ‘Cause I don’t really know.”

Another extremely awkward pause. This time Ranboo is sure he’s meant to be saying something, but even though he’s got about a dozen questions swarming around his head, he can’t quite figure out how to get them out of his head and into the air. So he just says nothing at all.

Clearly, this is not what Spooky wanted or was expecting. They scowl at him. “Anyway, just go.”

Ranboo watches with some sort of strange fascination as Spooky sinks into the floor, disappearing from sight. Rubbing his arms nervously, he glances around the room again, and his eyes latch onto a door under the staircase. That’s probably where he’s meant to go.

Ranboo crosses the room and pushes the door open.

The journey has officially begun, he supposes.

* * *

The first fifty doors were fine. Uneventful, even. A few cardboard cutouts popped out at him, and while he’s a bit ashamed of how frightened he got, he’s no worse for wear. He’d confirmed that he had his journal on him, thank goodness; he might have forgotten why he was here if he hadn’t brought it.

His hopes that he’d be able to traverse the mansion without issue were trampled, however, by room number sixty.

Room number sixty isn’t a hallway, like many of the other “rooms”. No, it’s a proper room, with a table and everything. A note sits delicately on top of the table, unmoved by any drafts blowing through the mansion, though he’d noticed that it wasn’t as drafty further in anyway.

The real red flag, though, is the mysterious puddle of green goo in the middle of the floor. Ranboo gingerly steps around it, spotting a hallway and a door off on one side of the room; his first thought is to beeline for it, but…

He has to admit, he really wants to know what the note says.

Making his way up to the table (taking great care to not ruin his shoes in the green liquid), he picks up the note, reading through it quickly. It’s poetry of some kind; it doesn’t rhyme particularly well, but it’s still something. He shrugs and carefully folds it, placing it in his backpack for later. Maybe he’ll figure it out.

His blood runs cold when he hears a moan from behind him, and then a sound like someone coming up out of a pool made of unfinished jello. Not even bothering to spare a glance behind him, he bolts for the exit, his backpack barely on his shoulder. The door opens without a struggle, something he’s grateful for, and before he knows it he’s running down the seemingly endless amounts of hallways, trying to loose whatever’s chasing him and steadfastly not looking behind himself.

He has a feeling he doesn’t want to know what’s chasing him, anyway.

* * *

  
  


At room number one hundred and twenty, Ranboo opens the door and gapes.

The room looks nothing like the rest of the mansion. Steely walls stare back at him, shining in a way that means they’ve probably been cleaned recently; the floor shines too, a pearly white. The room itself is a four-way hallway - the hall he’s standing in is one of the halls, with three other halls branching out from the room’s center, where it all meets together. The whole thing screams of a laboratory.

Tentatively, Ranboo takes a step into the room. His footsteps echo off the floor, like it’s made of metal. Maybe it is, but that doesn’t really matter that much to him right now.

The first door Ranboo tries is locked. He frowns softly, trying the door a few more times, but it steadfastly holds shut. Huffing, he crosses to the opposite door, which opens without any issue.

The problem with this door, of course, is that it leads to a ladder. Ranboo ducks his head under the door opening, ignoring the way his hands are shaking, and grasps onto the first rung. Step by step, he clambers down, praying to whatever god in the sky was watching him that he wasn’t attacked by some sort of horrific abomination against nature.

(Once he’s down there, he realizes he could have just jumped down without any issue; it’s not a steep enough drop that he’d break any bones. It’s a little embarrassing, but he pushes it out of his mind.)

The room (subroom) that the ladder leads to looks about the same. Ranboo notes the tubes lining the walls, and steps around the glass on the floor from the broken tube. He decides he’s better off not thinking about what broke the tube; he doesn’t really want to know. Instead, he approaches the table at the end of the hall.

Reaching the table, Ranboo inspects it, pulling a card and a note off of it. He pockets the card for later use and spreads the note back out on the table. As he scans it, he feels his anxiety rising.

_ Not enough sedatives? They were keeping something dangerous here? Was Subject 5 what was in the broken tube?  _ Ranboo is full of even more questions now. Quickly, he pulls out his memory journal and a pen, marking down what he’s learned thus far; it wouldn’t do him much good if he forgot it all in five minutes.

The first things he writes down are the things he absolutely, positively needs to remember, no matter what.

_ You’re in the mansion on the hill. You got dared to go in. Things are hunting you. _

Ranboo hesitates, biting at his lip for a second, before adding a bit more on.

_ Don’t ruin your shoes, you need those. If you see green stuff on the ground, run. _

He doesn’t know what else to add, so he just folds up the notes he has so far (a couple from some guy who really doesn’t know what the word romantic means, the poem, and now this one) and places them gently in the journal. He might need them later, who knows.

He breathes a sigh of relief as soon as he’s back up on the first level. It feels less constricted, even though logically he knows he’s just as trapped here as he was down there. Contemplatively, he pulls out the keycard and tries it on the first door (the right one, he’s pretty sure), but it stays locked. No dice, then.

He glances at the sturdy wooden door he’d entered this room from, and then toward the door he had yet to try. Swallowing thickly, he steels his nerves and swipes the keycard in the reader.

The door clicks open.

Not letting himself hesitate for too long, Ranboo pushes it open, taking in the newest room. It was basically the same thing as the last one - steel walls, pristine white floor, oddly large.

Except.

Except the floors weren’t quite as pristine white.

Ranboo finds his gaze locked on a dried pool of blood on the floor. A note lay just off to the side of it, the edges stained from the now-dry blood. Faintly, he hears clicking above him, and he rubs his forearms in a vain attempt to calm his nerves.

_ It’s probably nothing, _ he tells himself, and it is a blatant lie but he needs something to keep him going.

He approaches the note, careful to avoid the blood. It might be dry now, but that doesn’t make him any less uneasy about it. Crouching down, he picks up the note and immediately straightens up, not wanting to be caught in a vulnerable position.

The note does nothing to soothe his nerves. As soon as he processes the information he’s received, he hastily shoves the note in his pocket and  _ runs. _ He doesn’t stop to look back. Not when he hears the clicking get louder and closer. Not when he hears something incredibly large drop to the ground and move with so many legs. Not when he hears it scuttling close behind him, hell-bent on getting his flesh.

It stops chasing him, eventually, but he still doesn’t stop running until the next elevator.

* * *

  
  


The next odd area he finds is at room number one hundred and sixty-five. (He’s pretty sure it’s one hundred and sixty-five, anyway. He’s been keeping track.)

The door opens to an abandoned school, and Ranboo relaxes ever so slightly. Surely whatever lurks here can’t be too bad, not compared to everything else. (He’d gotten a glimpse of the huge bug-monster after leaving the elevator and boy was he glad he had a strict “no looking behind him” policy.)

The school itself is fairly ordinary. It’s just a normal school. Ranboo pokes around a couple of the rooms, takes the time to update his memory journal and shove a few new notes in it, and then he sets off.

He checks a couple of the classrooms on his way, making sure he isn’t missing anything he could potentially use. There were a few notes, all about some urban legend and a missing girl named Matsuri, but nothing he finds too interesting. The only real strange thing about this place was the shadows; he swears they’re staring at him, shaped like small children. But they’re shadows, they can’t do anything, so he ignores them.

On his way to leave one of the classrooms, he bumps into one of the shadows. At first he jumps back just because he’s surprised; last he checked shadows weren’t physical beings, and you couldn’t really touch them at all, much less accidentally bump into them.

Then the pain hits, and he makes a strangled noise, half-ender and half-human, and bolts out the door.

He takes refuge in a hallway, hand over his arm and backpack slung over his shoulder as always. Sitting down, he checks on his arm, wincing as he’s met with the distinct smell of iron. He’s bleeding. It’s not too heavy of a flow, so that’s good, but it’s still a fairly deep cut, and he probably shouldn’t leave it uncovered.

Ranboo doesn’t have any bandages on him, so he takes his tie and wraps it around the wound instead.  _ It’ll be fine,  _ he tells himself.  _ Just a surface wound. _

He’s not entirely sure if he’s convinced himself, but what he is sure of is that he needs to keep moving, so he gets up and walks. He rounds a corner, opens the wooden door that marks the end of the area, and immediately regrets it.

A horrible, raspy groan echoes through the room. Ranboo can feel just the slightest hint of breath at the back of his neck, making his hair stand on end. Someone starts humming, a soft tune that completely contradicts every single message his body is sending him.

So, naturally, he does what he does best, and books it.

* * *

  
  


Room number two hundred and ten is a horrible, rusty place that smells of nothing but iron and rot and death and metals. Ranboo  **_hates_ ** it. He hates it so, so much. He’s never going to be able to get the smell out of his clothes, out of his nose, out of his head. How many people died here for the smell to get this bad? How many animals? What  _ happened _ here?

He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to, he decides. Ignorance can be bliss, just this one time. (Never mind the fact that he’s been steadfastly running from his problems this entire time - this is the one situation where he’s pretty sure that’s the recommended way of dealing with them.)

His footsteps echo uncomfortably on the metal flooring, and the fog in the air makes it hard to see, and there’s a dozen other things he can mention about how this place makes him feel bad and unwelcome and upset and scared but it all boils down to one thing:

People died here. He knows this for a fact. He can feel it.

Against his better judgement, he pokes around the rooms a bit, only enough to grab any notes he notices and shove them in his pockets for later reading. He won’t stay here any longer than he needs to.

When he reaches what he’s sure is the end, he sees it. It’s a wall - more of a gate, really, made of rusted bars and spattered with some dried-up substance (he knows what it is deep inside him, he doesn’t stop to think about it though. He can’t, not now), attached to some sort of old, rusty mechanism that he hopes to every sky god to ever exist doesn’t work anymore.

(His prayers aren’t answered. He feels the vibrations in the floor as the mechanisms strain, and the gate lifts with a horrible screeching noise that rivals his own. He hears the footsteps before he sees the culprit, and turns tail and flees before he gets a good look.)

Ranboo does what he does best - he runs.

* * *

  
  


At room number two hundred and fifty, Spooky greets him again, a cheery expression on their face as they float in the air. Ranboo gives them a wary look, still keenly aware of the monsters chasing him. He doesn’t have a lot of time, he reckons. Or maybe he does? Who knows.

After a long, long moment, Spooky clears their throat. “So! You made it this far. That’s, uh- that’s great!” They give him a grin. It doesn’t quite seem sincere. “I shall grant you a gift! For your…” They hesitate, the grin sliding off their face for a moment before being quickly plastered back on. “Progress. So, uh...just keep going!”

Before Ranboo’s very eyes, a gift appears below the large painting hanging on the opposite side of the room. Spooky slides backwards into the painting, disappearing from sight once more.

With a heavy sigh, Ranboo trapses up to the gift, tearing off the wrapping paper with shaking hands. He opens the large box up.

Inside there’s only a note.

_ Look behind you. _

He turns to look and nearly has a heart attack.

At least two dozen cardboard cutouts pop out of the wall. The noise is deafening; he’ll never understand how they make that much noise, being that they’re only cardboard, but he’s not about to ask anyone about it. His back thuds against the wall as he backs up, pushed back into flight mode for a moment before registering that there’s no real threat around.

He slides to the ground with a dull thud and leans back. All the running and panic is starting to take a toll on him; exhaustion edges on his gaze. He can’t stop now, though, so instead of just sitting there and risking dozing off, he takes out his memory journal and updates it. He makes sure to add one line specifically.

_ Spooky’s a jackass. _

* * *

  
  


He reaches room number three hundred and ten, though not without difficulty. Everything has it out for him, it seems; he almost falls off a ledge on his way to the elevator, and he’s been chased by the horrible bug-thing twice and the...well, the best word he can find to describe it is the It. No features, nothing. Just a blank doll and a sword.

(It scares him. He doesn’t like that it’s blank all over. He doesn’t like that it knows where he is without eyes. Ranboo is terrified of the It.)

The It chased him once. Only once, but it lasted for longer this time. He managed, he outpaced it even at a fast walk, but he didn’t want to risk it so he’d ran until he reached the elevator.

(Ranboo knew if a longer chase happened again, with him in this state, he’d be dead meat. Nothing but a pearl and a mangled body on the ground. That scares him, too.)

So if he’s not exactly...enthused when he walks into a room that reminds him of a Zelda game and looks to be one giant puzzle, well, he has an excuse, at least. Ranboo’s not sure he could solve a puzzle on a good day, much less on a day like today.

His mood is brightened slightly when he realizes that it’s not a puzzle - all he has to do is find keys, apparently. The notes on the counter sour his mood again, though in a different direction; they tell a tale of a merchant who drowned for his creations.

It makes him want to cry, but he doesn’t have time for that, so instead he delicately folds up the notes and places them in his journal for later.

In the second part of the room, he drops the key under the table. It clatters as it bounces, coming to a rest next to the wall. He’ll have to crawl under the table to fetch it. Disgruntled, he does so, nearly banging his head in the process.

Once he’s under the table and the key is safely in his hands, he takes a moment to just lean back against the wall. All of his muscles ache, probably from running so much. He hasn’t gotten this much exercise in a long while, and it’s sure as hell never been paired with the threat of death and constant panic. He hadn’t got much sleep the night before, either; he’d stayed up late finishing some homework, and had slept fitfully at best. All of these issues had combined into one massive issue, and that was that Ranboo is exhausted.

Without his consent, his eyes droop, and he fights to keep them open, rubbing at them furiously. He should get up, get out from under the table, but he can’t quite muster up the energy to. Instead, he shifts slightly to the side, rearranging himself so he’s slightly more comfortable. A small, contented gurgle leaves his throat, echoing in the empty room, and before he knows it he’s out like a light.

(When he wakes up to a crudely-knitted blanket and a puppet tucked into his bag, he almost panics. But the halls are peaceful, and he’s not even chased for the remainder of this section. He’s not sure who to thank for this: the sky gods, or whoever gave him the doll?)

* * *

In room number four hundred and ten, he finds a cat.

It’s sat in the middle of a checkerboard room, tail swinging back and forth in time with the clock behind it. Ranboo approaches cautiously, hand held out like one would hold a hand out for a stray cat. The cat eyes his hand, and then much to his surprise, it speaks.

“Well, hello there. Are you lost, little one?”

Ranboo isn’t sure how to answer, so he simply nods his head and retracts his hand, feeling incredibly awkward. In his defense, he didn’t know the cat was sapient.

The cat simply hums in response. After a moment of eyeing him, she speaks again. “This place can help those who are ready, but expect turmoil more than you are used to.”

Ranboo does not know what the hell that means, and he can’t bring himself to ask. It seems silly to ask a cat about something, even knowing she can talk and presumably answer the questions he has.

_ Seriously, I’ve been chased around by monsters the last few days and  _ **_this_ ** _ is what I have a problem with…? _

Regardless, he ends up exploring each room. In each one, the cat gives cryptic advice that doesn’t help him at all, and Ranboo says nothing to each piece, simply nodding as though he had understood (which he had not).

When he’s finished with each room, he moves on. He opens the next door, and is met with nothing but space and the void.

Ranboo takes a step back, furrowing his brow. How is he supposed to get across this? Yet, when he looks up, the cat is simply sitting on empty space as if it’s normal ground. But that’s the cat, not Ranboo; Ranboo is not a cat or a monster or even fully an enderman, he’s just Ranboo. What works for the cat might not work for him.

Still, he needs to do something, so he screws up every bit of courage he has and jumps.

He doesn’t know what he expected; maybe to fall endlessly into the void until he eventually died of dehydration, or to disintegrate and die on the spot. But his feet land on solid ground, and though it’s nauseating to look down and see nothing below him, it seems like he’s in no danger of falling.

The cat looks at him with something akin to pride, swishing her tail back and forth. She hums quietly, before offering a final piece of advice.

“Knowing your shadow can greatly help you, but be ready to see what you’d rather not be.”

He considers it. Nods. Offers her a smile. And then he’s off again, opening the door to see some sort of horrible red spiralling magic room with no clear floor or ceiling or even walls.

He steps in anyway, and like the room before, it’s solid beneath his feet. He makes it to the end with no difficulties, reaching out to touch the vague white surface near the end-

-and then he’s in a different room entirely. He blinks, discombobulated, and shakes his head a couple times to clear it. He takes a few steps, stares at the brick walls with odd, shifting graffiti on them, and decides  _ you know what, this might as well happen. Life is already so goddamn weird. _

Then he looks behind himself and there is a looming wall of flesh and parts and bloodbloodblood, the smell of iron is overwhelming, and he knows instinctively that if he lets it touch him he’s dead, so he does what he does best and gets the hell out of there.

* * *

At room number five hundred, after he’s escaped the flesh wall and made his way through the remaining rooms, Spooky greets him with their standard cheery smile that doesn’t meet their eyes.

“Well, here you are, alive and...still here,” Spooky says, their tone such that Ranboo wonders if they expected he’d be dead by now. “You just...keep on going, don’t you?”

Ranboo doesn’t say a word, just keeps his head down. It almost seems to offend Spooky, but they don’t say anything about it. “The next door’s been fixed up for you. So enjoy, and keep moving on!” They pause for a moment, examining him. “You little...fleshy...weird one.”

And then they phase into the wall again. Ranboo doesn’t really know what he expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was going to post this entire fic all at once as a oneshot but i am tired and do not want to finish this right this minute
> 
> this is Not proofread i didnt proofread this At All so pls tell me if theres any major typos lol
> 
> ive literally never watched a ranboo stream this is probably massively ooc but i do not care :closes eyes:
> 
> spooky is referred to w they/them pronouns bc she never...actually told ranboo what she goes by...so he doesnt know and he is being polite in his head.


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ranboo wanders further into the mansion and meets some stuff he probably doesn't want to meet.

The door he opens is cold, and feels like stone, but the chill is almost welcoming on his hands. Every room feels oddly familiar; it takes a good couple of minutes for him to place it.

The first area. This place feels like the first area.

The feeling of deja vu gets worse the further along he goes, to the point where he’s convinced he’s just repeating the same area again. His suspicions are confirmed when he finds a familiar room.

Square room. Unassuming. Table in the middle with a note on it, gunk in the middle of the floor.

He’s back at the beginning.

With a heavy sigh, Ranboo picks up the note, and then blinks, his brain buffering for a moment. No, he’s not back at the beginning, this note isn’t the same…

A loud clunking noise echoes throughout the room. Ranboo jumps in surprise, whirling to face the source of the noise. A new door stands beside of the table, just as stony and cold as the last.

Ranboo pushes it open and is faced with a tunnel, yellow paint lining the walls. Black text painted on the yellow reads  _ Express Tunnel _ . 

Huh. Color him surprised.

* * *

At room number 550, Ranboo steps out into a forest, with lush grass and tall trees. The sun seems to be setting, casting a brilliant yellow glow over everything. It’s quite stunning, the leaves laying dappled shadows over grass that almost covers his ankles, even with his abnormal height.

He’d almost believe he was really outside, if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s the middle of autumn and all the trees have dropped their leaves by now. Still, it’s a welcome change from the stifling interior of the mansion. It’s certainly nice to feel the sun on his face again, and the air here seems fresher than the air in the rest of the mansion, clear of the hints of blood and dust that taint the atmosphere.

There’s a cabin here, too, and Ranboo thinks maybe this place is some sort of “checkpoint”. Someplace to safely rest at before moving on. Surely Spooky wouldn’t be so much of a complete asshole to make the entire mansion a deathtrap, right?

(Wrong.)

Ranboo lingers in the field for a moment, enjoying the feeling of the sun (even if it’s artificial), before moving on to the cabin. Briefly, he notes deer in the distance, but dismisses it. Deer won’t hurt him if he doesn’t startle them first.

The cabin is cozy, if a bit cramped, and Ranboo finds himself relaxing ever-so-slightly in its confines. There’s a note on the table, and Ranboo picks it up like every other note, reading it through.

The note confirms what he already knew - he’s not really outside, it’s just another part of the mansion. Deer making strange sounds, though...well, animals were weird, and it’s not like Ranboo can say anything about “strange sounds”. Maybe they’re in mating season or something, who knows. Not him, and he’s not particularly inclined to find out the reason, either.

Reaching around and pulling his backpack off his back, Ranboo pulls out his memory journal, taking a moment to update it with everything he knows right now. Flesh wall, express tunnel, seemingly ever-changing mansion layout, fake outdoors...Ranboo notes down a couple ideas on how he might leave, determined not to forget anything potentially useful. He could use the express tunnels, maybe? Surely there’s got to be more of them, and one’s got to lead to the outdoors. He slides the newest note in his journal, too; it’s a habit, at this point.

Satisfied with his findings, Ranboo gently places his journal back in his backpack, careful not to rumple the pages more than they’ve already been rumpled. He slings the pack back over his shoulder. He’s not particularly tired right now, and this is a new area he hasn’t explored yet, so he might as well do it now while the sun’s still in the sky.

Ranboo opens the next door and is met with a field full of deer. Startled, he just stands there for a few seconds, unsure of what to do. On one hand, he’s amazed that the deer haven’t scattered yet; he’s never been this close to deer before. Maybe if he stays still, they’ll walk up to him?

On the other hand, he has the overwhelming urge to approach the deer. Slowly, of course, otherwise they’ll spook and he won’t get anything out of the experience, but if he could get close enough…

Well, he’s never really wondered what a deer felt like before, but he could  _ know _ now.

Having made up his mind, Ranboo carefully tiptoes his way toward one of the deer, hand outstretched as though he held a peace offering. (He did not. The most he had was some beef jerky in his backpack, and he somehow doubted an herbivore would like that.)

The deer turns its head toward him once he gets close enough, evaluating him. It walks a bit closer to him, something Ranboo finds a little odd - weren’t deer supposed to be skittish? His curiosity overrides his common sense, though, and so he remains still.

The deer sniffs his hand curiously, looks him dead in the eyes, and bites him. Hard.

Ranboo shrieks, a horrid garbled noise, and jumps back, pulling his hand away from the deer. The deer stumbles backward, unsure of what to think about the ungodly noise Ranboo just made. The shriek also alerts every single other deer in the area.

All of the deer stare at him for a moment, before individually deciding “Alright, let’s go over there and fuck that guy up.”

And that is how Ranboo ends up having to run from a horde of angry, apparently carnivorous deer. He ducks under a tree branch, attempting to keep ahead of the deer behind him. As soon as he manages to reach the door, he tears it open and slams it shut behind him, leaning his weight on it until he’s sure the deer aren’t coming in.

Ranboo takes out his memory journal and updates it.

_ Do not try to befriend the deer. _

Reassured that he’ll remember that for later, Ranboo places the journal back in his bag again and sets off, snagging a note off the table as he does. He doesn’t want to stay here for too much longer, so he’ll have to read the note later. He pointedly ignores the bones in the corner. Not his business, never will be.

The next door leads to another outdoor area - the same one, it looks like. There’s no deer, which is a relief. An axe is buried in a tree trunk, and Ranboo stares at it for a moment, unsure of if he wants to take it.

The pros of taking the axe is that he would have a weapon against the pissed-off, carnivorous deer, and whatever else he happens to find on his journey. It’d be a nice reassurance, especially since this house is apparently just a deathtrap through and through.

The cons of taking the axe is that he has to actually carry the thing, and it looks like it weighs a good bit. Ranboo’s not weak, exactly, but he’s already tired, and he doesn’t want to wreck his journal so there’s no way in hell he’s putting that in his backpack. He also has no idea how to wield an axe, which could end up being an issue.

After a long moment of hesitation in which Ranboo goes back and forth and back and forth, arguing with himself, he decides the pros outweigh the cons and, with some effort, wrenches the axe from the tree. It’s heavy, just like he expected, and he staggers a bit from the weight before readjusting.

Straightening up, Ranboo switches the axe to his left hand and continues forward, pushing the next door open with his free hand. There’s more deer, something he does not appreciate, as he doesn’t particularly feel like being eaten today. He does his best to avoid them - he’d rather not test his knowledge on axe fighting just yet.

One of the deer looks up at him as he passes. Ranboo freezes, averting his eyes -  _ are they like bears? Are you not supposed to look them in the eyes? Is that even what you’re supposed to do for a bear, or is that a wolf? _ The deer lowers its head back to the ground, evidently deciding the grass is more interesting than him, and Ranboo relaxes. He shuffles past as quietly as possible, careful not to alert any more deer.

When he comes upon the next door, though, it’s blocked. A deer stands in front of it, nibbling on some grass with a decidedly disappointed expression. Holding his breath, Ranboo hugs the wall, pressing himself against it as he slowly shuffles towards the door. The effort is for naught, though; the deer notices him, and lunges with a growl that does  _ not  _ sound like it should be coming from a deer. Ranboo shrieks and darts for the door, managing to get inside and slam it shut before the deer can eat his hand, or whatever it was intending.

Letting out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding, Ranboo leans against the door, staring up at the ceiling. The new room is made of dark stone, and intricate patterns line the walls. Ranboo’s not paying that much attention to them, though; he’s just relieved he got out of the forest without losing any limbs. He considers the axe in his hand, unsure of what to do with it (he didn’t even end up using it), before shrugging and sliding it in the space between his backpack and his back. With his luck, he’ll end up cutting his back open, but it’s the most convenient spot right now.

Ranboo doesn’t bother exploring most of the rooms - they’re mostly the same. Drawers, table, otherwise empty. The only really interesting thing is the gramophone in one of the rooms - he’s never seen one before, but he elects not to mess with it. Who knows what could be living here? And if something was living here, it probably wouldn’t appreciate him messing with its stuff.

So he keeps going, like he has been. One of the doors is blocked off with wooden planks, but the planks are easily cleared off with the axe, and he probably could have pried them off even without it.

The next room looks to be the same - a long, dark hallway extends off of it, and a normal wooden door sits on the left side. Probably the way he’s meant to get out of this area. Ranboo takes a step-

-every single one of his senses is suddenly assaulted with the feeling of static. Ranboo garbles something out, probably in Ender, but to him it sounds like nothing but static. He nearly drops the axe in his hands, wobbling on his feet as he tries to stabilize himself, to no avail. Music filters through his ear - some sort of jazz tune, not that he really cares. The only thing on his mind is to  _ go, run, get out of here _ .

He bolts for the door before he can see what’s after him, running as fast and as far as he can. The static goes away eventually, the creature uninterested in pursuing him, but he doesn’t stop until the elevator.

* * *

  
  


Room number six hundred and ten is another laboratory. It looks more high-tech than the last one, with sealed metal doors taller than even Ranboo and crates upon crates of mysterious objects, Ranboo just can’t shake the feeling that something is off.

(It probably doesn’t help that the last time he went into a lab, a giant spider-centipede-thing tried to eat him.)

The power’s off, which isn’t ideal, but it doesn’t take much exploring before Ranboo finds the fuse box. Everything powers back on, bright lights nearly blinding him as they turn back on, and Ranboo has to blink more than a few times to clear the spots from his vision.

Now that he’s actually able to see more of the lab, he notices a little blue tablet on one of the crates. He picks it up; it’s made of glass, and is as thin as paper. Fragile, probably.

Scanning through it reveals absolutely nothing useful. Still, it’s an interesting find, so he stores it in his backpack. Maybe he’ll need it for later.

Backtracking to the first room reveals that the power turned on even more tech previously unusable; blue bars hover above the sealed doors, clearly digital in origin. Ranboo presses a hand on one, curious. The door opens with a loud clang, surprising him a little bit, and he chews on his lip nervously as he peers through the doorway.

Great, more hallways. Just what he wanted to find.

The laboratory is even bigger than he expected, with crates and doorways everywhere he looks, and he ends up getting a bit lost. Eventually, he winds up in a room with a suspiciously large vent on the wall. Nothing much else in it, just crates. Ranboo’s about to head for the door when the power goes out again.

It takes approximately ten seconds for Ranboo to process that that means he’s trapped in here.

Ranboo reacts to that in what he feels is the completely rational and normal way to react, and throws himself at one of the doors in a panic.

Being a scrawny teenager, he just bounces off of it, landing on the floor. He lays there for a moment, before realizing that anything could eat him while he’s laying here and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Scrambling to his feet, he flings himself at the door again - surely it’s got to give at some point, he doesn’t weigh that little, does he? Not unless he’s been here longer than he thought…

The door, however, is made of solid metal, and was presumably built to hold up against horrible monsters flinging themselves at it, and as such can very easily handle a scrawny teenager doing the same. Ranboo gives up after a few tries, his mind a little more combobulated.

He’s stuck here. He can’t get out, the doors won’t open. He can’t break the doors. So he’s just stuck here, waiting for whatever lives here to come kill him.

Unless…

Ranboo glances at the vent. He’s tall, but he’s scrawny - he’ll probably fit, since it’s big enough to hold an adult human. Or looks that way, at least. He might have to drag his pack behind him, but he’s more than willing to do so to get out of here.

Screwing up every once of his courage, Ranboo slides the axe in between the straps of his backpack, pries the vent cover off the wall and clambers in.

It’s a bit of a tight fit, with his height, but he manages to wrangle it so he can pretty easily crawl. Trying his best to ignore the squeezing in his chest, a sure sign of oncoming panic, he twists around and grabs his bag, pulling it in behind him. It clanks a bit against the metal vent, and he winces at the sound. It’d be so easy to kill him in here…

The vent system seems to go on forever. His breath quickens every second he’s still here, instincts screaming at him to get out, get out, he’s going to be crushed, it’s not good for him to be in such closed spaces. He ignores it to the best of his ability - better this than be eaten without putting up even a little bit of a fight. (Or starving, he reminds himself.)

After what seems like an eternity, the duct ends. Ranboo doesn’t even bother being careful with the vent cover this time - he slams his shoulder into it, knocking it off the opening, and scrambles to get out. In his haste, he ends up falling out of the vent, though it’s such a short distance that he doesn’t even get bruised. Just a little embarrassed.

Regaining his composture (or attempting to, anyway), he scans the room, looking for a door out. His heart sinks. There’s no regular doors at all, just a table with another slim piece of glass, a sealed metal door, and another vent. He’s going to have to go through all that again just to leave.

With a heavy sigh, Ranboo places his bag on the floor, taking the little tablet. He slides it in between the pages of his journal - no time to read now, better just to get it over with before he either collapses from stress or gets killed.

Prying the vent panel off the wall and laying it gently on the ground, he swallows, trying to gather up what’s left of his nerves and steel them. It doesn’t work. He climbs in anyway, dragging his bag in after him.

Mercifully, this vent is much shorter than the last, and while that doesn’t ease the panic that he feels crawling through it, it does make it less...intense. As soon as he clambers out of the vent (with a bit more grace, this time), he stands up, pulling the axe from his bag’s straps and slinging his bag over his shoulder. He’s not spending any more time hunched down like that if he doesn’t need to.

A fuse box in the corner catches his eye, and before he even checks for anything else in the room - a door, another vent, anything - Ranboo hurries up to the box and pushes the button that turns the power back on. The facility whirs back to life around him, and he turns to scan the rest of the room-

\-  _ why is there an eel in the vent? _ He stares, dumbfounded, at said eel in the vent. Ranboo is about 90% sure that eels do not naturally live in vents, or on dry land at all.

He doesn’t have much time to ponder the natural habitat of eels, though, because before his eyes the eel’s head ruptures, a horrible spray of yellow goo spattering the wall beside it. Ranboo backs up, covering his mouth. Something vaguely humanoid rises up out of the eel’s corpse, slowly, slowly, and Ranboo can see the horrible marred flesh, bent and twisted in ways it shouldn’t-

He turns to run for the door. The Thing screeches, a grating noise that hurts his ears, and he hears it follow. He runs faster.

The rooms fade back to normal as he runs, room after room blurring into one stretch in his mind, and as he thinks  _ maybe I’ve outrun it, it seemed pretty slow _ , he hears a horrible squelching noise behind him, like flesh being torn.

He runs faster.

The Thing catches up.

It’s different now, shed its humanoid form for something more snakelike, but it’s still the Thing. Ranboo can feel it, in his bones mind body flesh-

He pushes himself faster,  _ fasterfasterfaster don’t can’t let it catch you RUN _ , but he still barely makes it to the elevator in one piece. His legs and back are shredded to hell, and his shoulder aches (probably from slamming it into a metal door and two vent covers), but he’s alive. He’s still alive.

Ranboo realizes, with a sinking feeling like his heart’s dropped down to his stomach and dissolved, that if he runs into that Thing again, he won’t be alive much longer.

* * *

  
  


When Ranboo opens the door to room number seven hundred and ten, he half expects a gate straight to the deepest part of the Nether, or a room full of lava. Or something of the sort, anyway. Horrible, inescapable torture.

He is thus pleasantly surprised when it’s just a fast food restaurant.

Okay, the posters on the wall are a little unsettling, and whoever owns the restaurant is strangely insistent on making sure everyone knows that the food is made One Hundred Percent With Beef. It’s not another laboratory, though, so Ranboo decides it is a significantly safer place to rest. Might even have a bathroom he can use to clean his wounds. If this were anywhere else, he’d say it’s too unsanitary, but somehow he doubts many people have made it far enough to even see this place.

So he sets himself up at a table, with the axe on one side and him on the other, his backpack’s contents strewn across the table itself. He considers everything he has on hand, updating his memory journal with the important bits and going over the notes he hasn’t read yet. Nothing jumps out at him, or bites at his ankles, and he feels himself relax a little for the first time in a while.

Ranboo does notice that his jerky has mysteriously gone missing, with no explanation, but he probably just ate it at some point and didn’t write it down. It’s not that important, not in the long run, but he’d been planning on eating it while he was sitting down, so it’s a little bit of a letdown that it’s not there anymore.

There’s nothing more he needs to do with his bag, so instead, Ranboo decides to hunt down a restroom. He finds it with no trouble. The door to the men’s room is broken, but it’s not like there’s anyone to stop him from going in the other restroom, and he really does need to clean out his injuries before they get infected. So, women’s room it is.

The door creaks as he opens it, and he winces, half expecting something to jump at him. Nothing does. He breathes out a sigh, relieved.

The room’s empty, though he notices a bit of blood pooled in one of the stalls, but decides that is absolutely none of his business and ignores it. There’s a mirror, a couple sinks with some soap dispensers, and a paper towel roll, and that’s all he needs from here.

He needs to figure out exactly where he’s injured, first. Ranboo looks in the mirror and pauses.

God, he looks like absolute shit. Bags under his eyes, blood splattered on his clothes, hair mussed up, the works. What he’d expect, after spending hours (days? He’s not the best with time) running from monsters in an endless mansion.

He doesn’t remember his fangs being so pronounced that they poke out of his lips, but that’s an issue for Future Ranboo. Present Ranboo has injuries to clean, and maybe if there’s enough paper towels he can try and wash his hair, which is also a mess. That’d be nice, but it’s not a necessity.

Ranboo gets to work. He’s careful with the soap, not using so much that he’d have to use excess amounts of water to clean it out - he’s pretty sure cauterizing the wound would make things worse in this situation, not better, considering he’s not missing a limb or anything. After he’s cleaned a wound out, he towels it off. Water shouldn’t sit in the wounds, for the same reason he shouldn’t use too much of it on them.

Under the sink, he finds another roll of paper towels, so he ends up being able to wash the gunk out of his hair as well. When he looks in the mirror next, he still looks like a mess, but he’s a cleaner mess and that’s what counts.

However, he has run into another issue. Which is that he has absolutely no bandages to cover the wounds with. His clothes are nowhere near clean enough. He definitely doesn’t have enough towels to dry them off if he washes them, and he doesn’t really fancy sitting around naked for the next couple hours, so that leaves two options.

One, he could use the paper towels he has left, and wrap as many wounds as he can. He’ll just have to deal with it when the makeshift bandages rip, but it’s better than nothing.

Or two, he could try and hunt down a spare uniform and use that. It’s probably rude, but nobody’s manning the counter and he’s willing to bet there’s been no customers here for at least a year, so it’s not like they’ll need it. It’ll last longer than paper towels, for sure. And he might be able to find some food while he’s looking.

Mind made up, Ranboo leaves the bathroom in search of the faculty room.

It only takes a quick walk around the restaurant to confirm that there isn’t actually a faculty room, just a playplace and a freezer that are both locked. The last door, and the only unlocked one, leads to an office of some sort. A couple sheets of paper are scattered on the desk, and Ranboo gathers them up just in case, folding them up and putting them in his pocket. He rummages around through some of the drawers, looking for anything useful.

The final drawer has a spare outfit. Bingo.

Heading back to the table he claimed, he lays the outfit out on the table, tearing off little strips. It’s more than enough to bandage everything but his back, which is a mess of cuts and bruises. Ranboo’s not sure how he’d bandage that anyway, so instead, he just brings what he has to the bathroom and patches himself up.

It’s pretty easy wrapping most of the wounds, though a couple of the larger ones are a bit trickier - he has to use more than one strip of fabric for them. Still, he’s done quickly, with very little hassle.

As Ranboo’s about to leave the bathroom, a glint on the floor catches his eye. He trots over to the second stall, carefully opening it. There’s a key on the floor, angled just the right way to catch the light. He picks it up, inspecting it; it’s perfectly clean, no dents or smudges to be seen on it. A little tag on the back reads ‘Playplace’.

Huh, so he can go in there. Neat. He pockets the key and leaves the bathroom.

Back at the table, he spreads the notes out over the table, reading through them one by one. They all seem to be from the same person, an employee working here back when this place had customers. Ranboo frowns at the mention of a drive-thru; was the restaurant not always in the mansion?

The frown’s still on his face after he finishes the notes. He slips them between the pages of his journal, with all the other notes, and takes the key out of his pocket. Turning it over in his fingers, he reads the tag again, and then looks up at the playplace.

Guess he’s going to have to crawl through a small, cramped space again. Not his favorite thing in the world, but at least he’ll be able to see where he’s going this time…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter was going to be all of the remaining specimens in one chapter but the deer god and the alien took up like half the chapter and by the time i got to specimen 11 i was like "this is going to take a long time to get out if its going to be all the specimens in one chapter" so now this has 5 chapters instead of 4. (4 and 5 are going to be karamari and the dollhouse, respectively)  
> also i know that the restaurant isn't laid out like that but hunting down the location of every note annoys me and also why doesn't their bathroom have sinks. it should have sinks so i made it have sinks
> 
> dear god im gonna have to add the body horror tag arent i.  
> uhhhhh anyway this isnt as good as the last chapter but its mostly because i only had thoughts for specimen 11 so i basically made up everything else on the run.


	3. iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ranboo has a no-good, very bad time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Morning edit: Sorry for bumping this to the top of the tag, I spotted some errors that weren't meant to be there so I fixed them. Sorry ignore me

The playplace is just as cramped as he’d expected; he’s very tall, and this place was built for kids, not extremely tall, lanky teenagers. It’s uncomfortable, and his injured back presses against the ceiling of the tunnels, but if he knows anything yet it’s that there’s always things in the most inconvenient spots.

Thus, playplace. Small, cramped, borderline-painful playplace that echoes way too much for comfort.

Fun.

(Not fun at all. It doesn’t help that there’s some sort of weird, cheery, looping music playing on the inside that he couldn’t hear from outside. He doesn’t like it. Everything feels wrong.)

The longer he spends in here, the more uncomfortable he’ll be, and the more likely it is that he’ll rub his back open again. He scurries through quickly, bumping his head on a few of the seams but accruing no serious damage. He doesn’t stop moving forward until he reaches what he’s pretty sure is the end.

On the floor lies a key. So he was right, then. Ranboo scoops it up into his hand and gets out of the playplace as fast as he possibly can. He’s not spending any more time in cramped tunnels if he can help it.

The second he leaves the playplace, Ranboo lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He rubs the key in his hand absentmindedly, reveling in its smooth feeling. He’s not sure where to go from here. The key’s got to lead someplace, but where?

Well, he should probably grab his backpack, first of all. The key can wait until after he’s packed again. Ranboo haphazardly shoves everything back into it, making sure he packs what’s left of the spare uniform as well just in case. Slinging it over his shoulder, he inspects the key again, finally noticing the tag at the end. ‘Freezer.’

Being completely, one hundred percent honest, Ranboo doesn’t want to go inside the freezer. Instead, he tries the door to what he’s pretty sure is an exit. It’s locked, and Ranboo has no clue how to pick a lock.

_Freezer it is, then._

Much as he hates the idea, it seems to be the only way forward. Ranboo flips the key over in his hand, the pointy edge sticking out, and approaches the door to the freezer much like one would approach a feral animal. The door shows no real sign of being dangerous, but you can never be too prepared.

The door opens without any difficulty. Ranboo holds his breath, waiting for something to jump out at him, but nothing does. It’s just him and the large sacks of meat hanging from the ceiling. He pokes the nearest one, both out of curiosity and to make sure it won’t come alive and bite him. It doesn’t do anything.

Ranboo is not entirely sure what possesses him in the next few moments. He wouldn’t do this normally. Would not even dream of it. Raw meat’s not meant to be eaten, you’re supposed to cook it first or you’ll get diseases. But he’s hungry, and there’s been nothing else in the mansion…

Ranboo pulls off a chunk of the meat and takes a bite. And another. By the time he’s come to his senses and realized that actually, that probably wasn’t his best idea, he’s already eaten the entirety of the chunk he pulled off. Mildly disgusted, he wipes his hands off on his suit - not like it isn’t ruined already - and forces himself away from the meat. This place is doing things to his head.

The freezer doesn’t seem to lead anywhere, much to his dismay, but he finds another key near the end. He picks it up, reading the tag on the back. ‘Exit.’ _Looks like this is my way out, then._

A garbled noise not unlike his own noises catches his attention. Ranboo whirls around, checking the corners wildly. He’s sure he didn’t say anything, so who-

A clawed hand rakes down his already torn-up back. Ranboo makes some sort of strangled shrieking noise and bolts. He only makes it as far as the exit door before he realizes that he still has to unlock said door. Fumbling with the key, he struggles to fit it into the keyhole, almost dropping it several times in his panic; his palms are too sweaty to keep a proper hold of it.

He gets it open after a few seconds, barely avoiding another swipe to the back, and then he runs as fast as he can. Again.

* * *

  
  


At room number seven hundred and fifty, he’s met with another large room. It’s seemingly empty, with nothing but a table in it. He’s still cautious, though; there’s no telling what could be lurking in the shadows.

He makes it to about the middle of the room before getting the absolute shit scared out of him by Spooky. Again. They descend from the ceiling like some sort of demented angel, a grin on their face as always. The two stare at each other for a moment, Ranboo disheveled and bloody, Spooky...well, a ghost, before Spooky finally speaks.

“Oh hi. I didn’t think you’d make it this far!”

Ranboo wants to cuss her out so, so badly. But he’s starting to think it might be a bad idea to talk to anything in this cursed mansion, and earlier he bit his tongue and it made a hole much larger than it should have, so he is forced to stay his words.

Spooky is oblivious to this, and continues speaking. “And you’ve got an axe? Nice!” They pause, seemingly just for dramatic effect. “Well, congratulations. You’re just about there...I think.”

There’s another pause, in which Ranboo seriously considers strangling the ghost in front of him. He decides against it on the grounds of a) Spooky being a ghost and thus intangible, and b) you never want to make the ghost angry.

“Well, I didn’t really have a gift ready, so, uh...Shaa!” Spooky points their hands at Ranboo with much flourish. Ranboo feels slightly heavier, like there’s a weight on top of him, but other than that there seems to be no effect. “There you go, unlimited stamina. It’ll never, ever run out. So...see you later!”

Spooky ascends back into the ceiling while Ranboo struggles to process literally any of what they just said.

Unlimited stamina sounds nice - presumably it means he’d be able to swing the axe as much as he wants, too - but he has no idea what it actually means. It’s not like he has some sort of video game stamina bar at his disposal; he’d probably be a lot more dead if he was forced to abide by the laws of video games. The gift seems to imply he has some sort of measurable stamina ability, like in Dungeons and Dragons, but maybe they were just referring to physical fitness? Is he just really buff now?

Ranboo shrugs it off and continues onward, deciding it’s probably not important.

(A couple rooms later, he gets the distinct feeling he’s being watched as he struggles with the fact that he actually, physically can’t sprint anymore. He wishes he’d taken the opportunity to cuss Spooky out.)

* * *

  
  


Room number eight hundred and ten is a mansion. Twin sets of curved staircases lead up to a second floor, and doors that still have brass knockers line each wall. Ranboo is momentarily stunned, astonished by the sheer size of the place - and he’s only in the first room of it!

 _What’s a mansion doing in here? Is this some sort of resting spot? A trap? Does this count as mansion-ception? Is that even a word?_ Ranboo’s head is full of questions, none of which have answers. Spotting a table off to the side, he makes his way over, leaning on it for a moment to recollect himself.

Lying on the table is a note; Ranboo reads through it carefully, hopeful for any little tidbit of information he can get. There’s nothing new in it, just things he’s already come to conclusions about himself. Still, it’s good to see he’s not the only one confused about the concept of mansion-ception. If that’s even a thing.

He can’t just stand around forever, though; at some point he’s got to move again, and that point might as well be now. So Ranboo carefully folds the note up into a square, slips it in his pocket, and picks a door at random to go through.

It leads to a hallway. Of course it does. Including the one he just came from, there are 3 doors in this end of the hallway; one’s locked, so he tries the other one. It leads to a different hallway, that ends in another three doors. Ranboo can already feel his head starting to hurt.

Two of the doors are broken; the third leads to another massive room, with a long, large dining table in the middle and an unlit fireplace in the back. There’s a note and a jar full of peppers on the table. Ranboo goes for the peppers first. Even though he’s never really been one for the spicy vegetables, he’s not going to pass up food.

Reaching out and grabbing a pepper, he takes a bite and grimaces. Wax. Not a real pepper. He finishes the pepper anyway. He’s sure he’ll regret it later, but that’s a problem for Future Ranboo. Present Ranboo is starving, tired, and in need of a proper bath, and doesn’t care if what he’s eating is wax. At least he’s still eating.

The note’s a bit more helpful, with a bit of insight on the nature of the mansion. Fake. Everything’s fake. The bricks are painted, so is the wood...it’s just as fake as the forest from earlier. He doesn’t really want to know what’s lurking in here, but he has a sinking sort of feeling in his chest that he might be forced to find out anyway.

Jamming the note in his backpack, he pulls out his memory journal - might as well update it while he’s here. He’s got a good bit to add to it this time; disappearing doors, something else speaking Ender, and, of course, the mansion itself. Having finished his updates, he places it back in his bag with care, trying not to jostle the fragile stuff. He bangs the bag around enough as it is.

Caught up on everything he needs to do, Ranboo straightens up, stretching a bit as he does. His bones make some concerning cracking noises, which Ranboo ignores. He’s probably just stiff, and the stretch feels nice on his poor tortured back.

Ranboo surveys the room in an attempt to figure out where he’s meant to go next. He’s not very successful; the room is large, and there’s more than one door on each wall again. God only knows which one he’s supposed to go through.

Unfortunately for Ranboo’s sanity, the next hour and a half of his travels consist of opening and closing the doors in the fake mansion.

At long last, he finds a wine cellar. While not exactly an exciting find, it’s different from the other rooms, and there might be actual food in it. Ranboo takes a couple steps and picks up a note.

He doesn’t get much time to read it, though, because a few seconds later he hears footsteps outside the door.

Panicking, Ranboo scurries for the nearest possible hiding spot, which turns out to be lying on the ground next to some boxes. He’s squished up uncomfortably, trying to make himself as small as possible. He can’t be seen, not now. He’s almost out!

The door slams open with a resounding _boom_. Heavy footsteps echo through the room, accompanied by a horrible scraping noise. Ranboo squeezes his eyes shut, a prayer on his lips. He holds his breath, waiting for either his own death or for the footsteps to retreat.

It takes a few minutes, but the intruder (are they really an intruder? Do they just live here, and Ranboo’s the one intruding? The second one’s more likely) leaves the room. Ranboo lets out a breath, peeking over the boxes. Empty room. He untangles himself and stands up.

Nothing has changed about the room. Absolutely nothing. With a heavy heart, Ranboo resigns himself to twenty more minutes of aimless door-opening, which is exactly what occurs.

He finds a key in the fireplace, covered by soot and rusted by age. With the key, he opens a door upstairs. There’s nothing in the room, just a bed and a closet. Ranboo considers taking the sheets, just in case; he’ll need to change his makeshift bandages sometime in the future, and you never know when you might need a rope.

Mind made up, he slings his backpack and the axe onto the bed, bundling up the top layer of sheets. He lays the memory journal on the bed with care, leaving it well out of flinging range, and gets to work trying to cram the sheet into his already-stuffed backpack. A good portion of the notes have fallen out of the journal and thus stayed in the backpack; they don’t take up much room, but they’re annoying.

Heavy footsteps start up the stairs. Ranboo freezes, dropping the sheet back onto the bed and darting for the closet. He crouches, shoving himself as far as possible into a corner of the small closet and covering his mouth with his hand.

The door slams open. Ranboo keeps his mouth shut and his breath shallow, closing his eyes so he can’t see what’s outside. Whoever it is is calling for him, telling him to come out. His heart stops every time they speak, and it seems like it always starts up again beating faster than before. The footsteps stop outside his closet for a moment, and he almost starts crying from stress, but they start back up again soon after, and trail towards the door.

When the door slams shut again, Ranboo waits. He listens as hard as he can for footsteps, hoping to hear whether they’ve gotten out of earshot yet or not. But there aren’t any to hear; it’s like the person’s ceased to exist.

As quietly as possible, Ranboo opens the closet door. His fingers wrap around the edge of it, and he peers at the door, fear clouding his eyes as though he expects it to burst open at any second. It doesn’t, and he clambers the rest of the way out of the closet, taking a deep breath.

A key lies on the floor, dropped by whoever’s looking for him. The bed’s made again, with his backpack strewn onto the floor, a couple of notes and the puppet from earlier having fallen out of it. The axe is embedded in the wall, high enough that even Ranboo’s going to have trouble reaching it. He’s not concerned about that, though. His eyes dart around the room, looking for a familiar, worn-down journal.

He doesn’t find it. It’s not under the sheets of the bed, or the bed itself, and it hasn’t been shoved in his backpack either. He checks and double-checks every corner of the room, and finds nothing. His memory journal is gone.

Ranboo gets the distinct feeling that things are about to get much, much worse.

Pocketing the key and gathering his things back up, he tiptoes back down the stairs, trying his best not to alert the other person in the mansion. One of the stairs creaks as he steps on it, and Ranboo freezes, holding his breath. No footsteps come. He relaxes ever so slightly and makes his way down the rest of the steps.

He’s lucky; the key opens the first door he tries. It leads to a library, full of bookshelves and knowledge. Ranboo wonders if his journal’s been put here, for a moment, but then dismisses the thought. Even if it’s in here, he’d never be able to find it.

The shelves seem fine, normal, even. The only thing Ranboo finds that’s out of the ordinary is an empty slot in one of the shelves. There’s supposed to be a book there, a pretty thick one judging by the size of the gap; Ranboo makes a mental note of it. It might be important. (The fact that he’s not able to make a physical note of the missing book is already stressing him out.)

There’s a key lying between a set of bookshelves, and Ranboo picks it up, turning it over in his hands. There’s only two locked doors left in the house, and one’s clearly the exit - therefore this key can only open one door. He knows where to go.

It doesn’t take long for him to get to the door, and it opens without any problems; it leads to another spacious room with a pile of boxes in one corner, a table with a book on it in the other, and a piano near the front.

He’s tempted to mess with the piano, but before he gets the chance to, he hears heavy footsteps coming down the hall. Panicking, he hurries to the pile of boxes and squeezes himself into the pile - it’s a tight fit, but he’s (hopefully) hidden.

It follows the same pattern as before - the person enters, drags something metallic around for a while, and then leaves without a trace. This time, they slam on the piano a bit, and Ranboo winces at the assault on his ears. It’s much too loud for comfort. They don’t stop outside his hiding place this time, at least.

As soon as they’re gone, Ranboo wriggles out of his spot, stretching himself out again. The piano’s been closed, but other than that the room is untouched. Ranboo goes for the book on the table, lifting it closer to his face so he can see it better. It doesn’t open, and there’s no title on the front or side of it. It’s more of a block than a book, to be honest. Ranboo keeps it on him anyway, though; maybe it goes in the empty spot in the library.

Backtracking gets easier every time he does it, and he finds himself back at the library in no time. Crossing his fingers, Ranboo slots the fake book into the empty space. The bookshelf rumbles and begins to shift to the side, and Ranboo winces. _Ender, that’s loud._

Under the bookshelf is a trapdoor. Ranboo grimaces. More tight spaces. Seems like this mansion’s hell-bent on making him as uncomfortable as possible.

He heaves open the trapdoor and clambers down, nearly losing his balance in the process. It’s a little less cramped than he thought it would be - Ranboo can’t stand upright, but at the very least he’s not stuck on his stomach.

The tunnels seem to go on for ages. The long, winding passages are dark, and so filled with dust that it’s hard to breathe. Ranboo’s hands are caked in dirt, and it feels like there’s some in his eyes as well, which he doesn’t appreciate. It’s dark, but not really as dark as it should be, which makes him more than a little suspicious. Still, at least he isn’t completely blind.

The initial passageway opens up to another room with two doors. After a moment’s hesitation, Ranboo goes for the closest one. More passageway. Great. Just what he wanted to see.

He keeps going anyway. He’s not sure the tunnel’s wide enough for him to turn around, and besides, he got himself into this jar of worms and by Ender he will get himself out of it.

The tunnel opens out to a slightly larger room, with more than enough space to turn around in. A couple of tables are lined up end to end, and a old, splintering cabinet is pushed against the side of the wall. Ranboo takes a moment to marvel at the size of the room - it’s impressive, especially since it’s underground - when he hears footsteps.

Heavy footsteps. Again.

He scrambles for the cabinet and jams himself inside. He barely fits, his back pressed against the cabinet’s decaying wall. He has a feeling he’ll be pulling splinters out of himself for ages.

It’s the same routine as before. Ranboo holds his breath and squeezes his eyes shut and pretends the world doesn’t exist, and his unsee pursuer ambles around, presumably looking for him.

Except this time, he’s found.

The cabinet door creaks open, and Ranboo stiffens, hesitantly opening his eyes. He’s met with an intimidating figure - a hulking, bald man, tall enough that he’s probably even taller than Ranboo himself. A scythe is raised over his head, preparing to swing downwards.

Ranboo bolts, barely avoiding a strike to the skull. He doesn’t know where he’s running to, just that he has to get away. The passages seem a lot longer than they were before, but there’s no way that’s even the slightest bit possible. They can’t have gotten longer, right? Is he just misremembering how long they were?

At the tunnel’s end is the trapdoor, which has been left hanging open. (He could swear he closed it behind him.) Ranboo heaves himself through the narrow opening, and pulls the trapdoor shut behind him. It might buy him some time. He desperately needs time.

He’s been through the mansion enough times that it doesn’t take him that long to find the exit door. The key in his hand is heavy. He doesn’t remember picking it up. It fits the keyhole, though, and that’s all that matters.

The door swings open without any trouble. Ranboo runs, and runs, and he doesn’t stop. He can’t. He won’t.

* * *

  
  


Room number nine hundred and ten opens to a wide, dark area. The floor tiles are coated with some kind of junk, and the whole room smells of seaweed and salt. He can hear running water somewhere nearby, but he can’t tell where the sound is coming from.

So the ocean, then. Ranboo can already tell he’s not going to have fun in here.

The room has four doors - at least, from what he can see, anyway. It’s dark enough that he can’t quite tell if there’s more hidden in the back. He came through one, which means it’s…

It means it’s going to be locked. Right. He takes a breath in, trying to steady his nerves. It won’t do him any good to be worried - it’ll just be a drain on his energy, and he’ll end up forgetting more. He ends up wringing his tail between his hands in an effort to keep himself calm.

(Something feels wrong about the action. Something’s wrong with him, it feels like, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.)

The first door he tries is stuck shut. Ranboo pushes on it as hard as possible, but it still doesn’t budge. He peers through the window near the top, squinting to see if he can figure out what’s blocking the door.

The answer is water. A lot of water. There’s no way the door’s opening with that much water behind it - he’ll have to find a way to drain it all. Even if he could open it right now, he wouldn’t want to.

On his way to try one of the other doors, he nearly slips on a note. Scowling, he picks it up, scanning it quickly. Something about whales. Ranboo shoves the note in his backpack for later. (He’s not sure why he started doing that, but he finds that looking at the notes helps jog his memory a bit when he starts forgetting things, so he keeps saving the notes.)

The next door actually opens, much to his relief. It opens to a hallway, stretching out a good bit in both directions. The corridors are mostly dry, though a couple drops of water drip down from the ceiling. One hits him on the arm, and he grimaces at the burning feeling before wiping it off with what’s left of his sleeve. Maybe not the most sanitary, but at this point, he doesn’t care.

The first side of the hallway ends in a couple of doors. Most of them won’t budge - probably flooded - but the one that does has a desk and a little table in it.

Ranboo picks the note up, reading it through. He feels a shiver run down his spine.

_“Excerpt 4132_

_And then I watched carelessly_

_as the sea rose above the sky_

_casting waving shadows over_

_the world._

_I saw the silhouettes of_

_creatures both familiar and_

_forgotten. And suddenly I_

_found myself falling upwards_

_towards an ocean of darkness.”_

Ranboo doesn’t have a clue what it’s supposed to mean, but he gets the feeling it might be important, so he stores it in his pocket instead of his backpack. It’s more than a bit ominous, but he’s under the impression that most poetry is.

The desk has nothing but a bunch of paperclips in it, so after grabbing a couple, he leaves the room, tail swishing behind him. He nearly shuts the door on it before remembering it exists, and that he feels pain through it. Right.

(How did he forget that? He’s always had one, right?)

The door right next to him opens fine as well, and Ranboo pokes around a bit. There’s a lantern and a box of matches, along with two more notes about whales. He shoves the notes in his backpack before lighting the lantern, holding it up so he can see the rest of the room a bit better.

It’s almost identical to the one he was in before: table, desk, chair. Nothing too interesting. Ranboo shoulders his bag and leaves. He doesn’t bother going down the other end of the hallway, instead just making his way back to the first room.

The other door there also leads to a hallway with two sides. Ranboo goes left first, wincing as a water drop hits his tail. He opts to curl it around his leg, keeping it out of harm’s way. It won’t do him any good if he has to wade through water, of course, but for now, it’s fine.

He opens one of the doors and gapes, awestruck. The room is lit much better than the rest of the facility. A huge set of windows is set in the front of the room, keeping the massive amounts of water out.

And it is a _lot_ of water. The entire facility is probably submerged. Ranboo shudders just thinking about what would happen if the glass broke. There wouldn’t be that much left of him. His tail curls a little bit tighter around his leg.

(It’s a weird feeling. It shouldn’t be. He’s done this so many times before, surely? He doesn’t remember doing it before, but his memory has always been faulty.)

There’s a note on the floor, and he picks it up. More about whales. This time about a dead whale. He shrugs and shoves it in his bag, deeming it unimportant. He can read it later, if he really wants to.

As he turns to leave, he hears a deep, echoing sound, one that reverberates in his bones. Ranboo turns back around.

A huge whale drifts down from above, passing by the window. It bellows, the noise bouncing off the walls of the room; it’s incredibly loud, and Ranboo finds himself covering his ears to block it out a bit. He marvels at the whale, eyes wide. He’s never seen a whale before, at least not that he can remember.

Ranboo just stands there for a little bit, hands over his ears, tail twitching every so often. (Excitement, he thinks. Or nervousness? He isn’t quite sure.) The whale disappears from view, slowly but surely sinking down towards the bottom of what he presumes is the ocean, but he still just stands there.

_Incredible._

Eventually, though, he has to leave. Ranboo pushes the door open and walks down the other side of the hallway. There’s more doors - one’s jammed and the other has a lock with a little set of dials to input something. A set of numbers, probably.

Ranboo holds the lantern up to it, squinting. He spins one of the dials. All of the sides are numbers. _So it needs a code of some sort. Huh._

He hasn’t even the slightest clue what the code might be, so instead he sits down, unravelling his tail from his leg. He leans back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. His brain’s a bit fuzzy (probably exhaustion, he rationalizes), but there’s got to be something he can think of.

_Wait. The note from earlier has a number on it, doesn’t it?_

Ranboo reaches into his pocket and extracts the note, unfolding it and flattening it out a bit so that he can read it better.

 _Excerpt 4132._ That has to be it. He doesn’t know what else could possibly it.

Crossing his fingers, he slips the note back in his pocket and tries the combination. The door swings open and slams against the wall with a resounding _thud_. Ranboo bites his tongue, holding back a cheer - he’s not sure why he’s so happy about this, but it feels like some sort of great achievement.

The room is the same as all the others. Desk, table, note. He reads the note; something about the facility being flooded. Ranboo shivers a little bit, eyes darting to the floor. He doesn’t want to step in any water.

The floor’s dry, though, so he moves on to the desk. A bright, shiny key sits on top of it, and he picks it up, rolling it over in his hands. The tag on the back reads ‘Water Pump.’ Ranboo doesn’t recall there being any locked doors, but then again, he had kind of just assumed they were all jammed…

The next fifteen minutes consist of Ranboo trying to fit the key into every door he can think of. Truly exhilarating.

Eventually, he finds the door that the key opens. Hesitantly, he pushes the door open, half expecting to get soaked. But the floor is completely dry. He feels a bit silly for being so worried.

In the middle of the room is a large machine labelled “Water Pump.” It’s pretty obvious that this is, in fact, the water pump. After a couple seconds of fiddling with the controls, Ranboo gets it to power on. The machine shudders back to life, clunking as old, rusted mechanisms start moving once more.

Ranboo walks back to the main room, being careful to go around the places where water drips from the ceiling. Peeking through the window of the door that had been blocked off with water, he notices that the water has receded quite a bit. He can probably get the door open now.

It takes a bit of pushing, but the door slams open with a loud _clang_. Ranboo peers inside the room. Almost all of the water has been drained out, though there’s still a lot of puddles on the floor. Wrapping his tail around his leg again, he navigates around them, the lantern’s light glinting off the sodden floor.

At the end of the hallway is another door. It’s wooden this time. Ranboo presses his hand against it. Cold. He swings it open.

Water rushes through the door, and Ranboo shrieks, dropping the lantern. The fire inside gets snuffed out in the process. He backs away from the door, hoping that the water will stop at some point, but it doesn’t. It just gets closer. There’s no other way out of here, either.

He’s going to have to go through the water.

Understandably, Ranboo is not particularly enthused by this.

Hissing as the skin on his legs burns, Ranboo wades into the water, scrambling atop a floating box. It dips under his weight, but it doesn’t submerge. He sighs in relief, hefting his backpack a little bit higher and adjusting the axe accordingly. It shouldn’t get wet. Really, Ranboo shouldn’t get wet either, but he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

Surveying the room, he sees a couple more boxes. _Hopefully there’s a lot of those in the next rooms, they’re pretty handy._ He’s not sure where to go next, though, so he decides to pick a direction and hope for the best.

The first direction he picks leads to a broken door. The next one is a locked door. Ranboo groans internally. This is not what he needs right now. It is the opposite of what he needs right now. He trudges through the water toward the door he hasn’t tried yet, wincing at every step. His legs are going to be burned to hell after this.

The door opens, though not without significant difficulty, and Ranboo finds yet another room full of water. There’s a couple boxes, and he can see something shining on top of them. He probably needs whatever it is, so he makes his way over, clambering on top of the boxes.

The shiny thing turns out to be a key. Ranboo dries it off a bit on his shirt, before holding it up to his face to inspect it. There’s no tag, but he can safely assume it goes to the locked door in the other room.

Trudging back toward the door, Ranboo unlocks it and pushes it open. His legs are burning, which makes it much harder to actually push with any force without being in agonizing pain, but he’ll manage. He has to.

The next room is eerily quiet. Ranboo wades through the water, hopping on boxes every so often. He’s about halfway through the room when he hears a splash.

Something’s in the room with him.

He bolts. It’s significantly harder to run in water, and he can’t run for indefinite lengths like he can on dry land or his legs will burn beyond repair. So he takes short breaks. Rests a little. Then he keeps running, pushing past the pain the best he can.

The problem arises when his tail gets grabbed.

Startled, Ranboo topples over, falling into the water. Pure agony washes over his body. Everything’s on fire, he’s burning he’s dying he can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t-

It feels like his skin is dissolving, the flesh underneath sizzling in flame, except that he’s in the water, fire can’t burn in the water, he knows that. He yanks his tail out of the grasp of whatever horrid creature has it, stumbling to his feet. All his clothes are soaked. He hopes his backpack’s avoided getting too wet, but he doesn’t have time to check.

Staggering, he hauls himself up onto a box, whimpering as the rough surface aggravates his burned palms. He sits there for a little, keeping an eye out for any splashes or bubbles. There aren’t any.

He has to keep moving. He has to get out of here. It hurts, it hurts so much and he wants for nothing more than to just sit here and lick his wounds, but he can’t. He can’t risk it.

So Ranboo runs again. He vaguely registers the water disappearing at some point, which he’s grateful for. But he keeps running. He can’t stop.

He won’t. He won’t, he won’t, he won’t.

* * *

  
  


In room number nine hundred and fifty-seven, Ranboo finds a strange machine. It’s made of shining, clean metal, and takes up a large portion of the room. Curious, he approaches it, keeping his axe at hand just in case. His tail swishes behind him.

But the machine doesn’t move. It is, after all, just a computer. Ranboo lowers the axe, still wary. It continues not moving. He sets the axe to the side and taps at it.

The machine hums for a moment, and then the screen glows to life, displaying a simple interface. Ranboo bops around on it a bit - it won’t let him edit the mansion layout, which is a shame, but he can access the specimen database.

The specimens are fascinating, in a morbid way. Ranboo’s dug out some of the shorter notes from his bag, writing down anything he thinks he’ll need later on the backs.

Most of the specimens he’s encountered, or he’s pretty sure he’s encountered, judging by their descriptions - he’s definitely seen Specimen 10, and it was pretty hard not to see Specimen 12. Some, though, he’s never seen.

Specimen 9’s been neutralized, apparently, so that would explain why he’s never seen it. It doesn’t seem particularly interesting - just a head made of clay. A little creepy, but altogether not the weirdest thing he’s seen. 

Specimen 6, on the other hand, is labelled as active. A life-sized puppet found in a reservoir. Its method is listed as physical punctures, which sounds a lot like a fancier way of saying “stabbing.”

He’s never seen it. He doesn’t even get a shiver looking at it. He just feels...sad. The specimen reminds him a bit of the puppet in his bag, nestled in between notes and bits of cloth. It almost feels familiar.

The other specimen that catches his eye is Specimen 14.

The picture’s of a blond kid, glaring at the camera, with a baseball bat in one hand and the other covering part of their face. They’ve been neutralized, according to the computer; the method listed is “blunt trauma,” but they don’t have any fatalities.

Ranboo stares at the entry for a long, long time. He takes note of every little thing. The scars on the face, the red bandana, the pupils that don’t look human (though that could just be a photo error). They can’t be older than seventeen.

It feels tragic.

He wonders if he’ll end up like that, too.

* * *

  
  


Room number one thousand isn’t quite what he expected. It’s a fairly normal looking room. Nothing’s inside it; no decor, no tables, not even bones. It’s just him, his stuff, and the exit door.

The exit door is metal, a little bit rusted near the edges. Chains are wrapped around it, equally rusty. Ranboo takes them out with one swing of his axe. There’s nothing stopping him from leaving.

He wrings his tail in his hands, glancing behind himself. There’s no one watching. There’s no one to stop him, or hurt him. He’s free to go. He did what Spooky asked.

He survived.

Ranboo pushes the door open.

It’s so bright. He has to squint to be able to see anything. His eyes adjust after a moment, and he surveys the world again. It’s a sunny day. The grass is green, the sun is high in the sky, and there’s a few clouds that catch the light just right. A couple of trees stand nearby, their leaves casting dappled shadows on the ground. It’s beautiful.

It doesn’t feel right. Something’s wrong. Something’s seriously wrong.

~~_(I’m forgetting something, aren’t I?)_ ~~

Ranboo sits down on the grass. It feels real enough. Gripping the axe in his hands as tightly as he can, he stares into the sky. Blue. Like it should be. Not...green, or something. That would be weird.

He’s forgetting something.

He listens to the birds call. There aren’t any in sight, which is to be expected given he just staggered out of the mansion looking like some sort of frightening beast. It’s normal bird behavior. It’s nothing to be suspicious of.

The calls don’t sound quite right, though. It’s almost like they’re repeating themselves, over and over.

Ranboo stands up. He shoulders his bag. He takes a few steps forward.

Something happens.

In an instant, everything stops. It’s deathly silent. His hoarse breathing is the only thing he can hear. His knuckles turn white as he positions the axe between himself and anything that might try and kill him.

The sky displays a Windows error message.

Ranboo almost starts laughing. It’s absurd enough that he’s not quite sure it’s actually happening, but it’s real enough that there’s no doubt that it’s happening. This place was fake, just like the forest. Of course it was. His tail flicks in annoyance.

From the dirt rises Spooky. They stare at him. He stares at them. It takes a solid minute before they start speaking.

“Well, you made it. Congratulations, I guess.” They look and sound utterly disappointed. There’s a moment of awkward silence where Ranboo ponders cursing them out for everything they’ve put him through, and they probably contemplate stabbing him or something. Who knows. “Uh...well…”

In the distance, something roars. Spooky perks up, resuming their normal cheery expression. “Oh!” they chirp, looking him directly in the eyes with their dead, dead eyes. “So now, you must pass one final test to prove your...fortitude, or dedication. Or something.”

Ranboo can only watch, stunned, as they descend into the ground once more. Another earth-rattling roar comes from the distance. He tightens his grip on the axe.

Okay then. He can do this.

A door abruptly pops into existence next to where Spooky was standing. Cautiously, he approaches it, keeping the axe in front of him. It opens with no trouble.

And suddenly, Ranboo’s standing in a white hallway. Dust particles float around near him, shining in some sort of ethereal light. It’s beautiful, in a different way. Haunting, almost.

Wandering down the hall, he finds a radio on a table. It’s already turned on, so he stands there for a moment to see if it’ll play anything. Ranboo’s just turned away from it when the static dims. A tinny voice emits from the speakers.

“I’m taking all those ‘logs’ they keep throwing out, and I’m nailing them together.”

Ranboo freezes in his tracks, slowly turning to face the radio. He eyes it warily. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t broadcast anything else. Just static.

He moves on.

The next hallway is full of locked doors. He tries a couple of them, but he doesn’t have any keys on him. He keeps walking. Something tells him he shouldn’t stop.

The room after that is shaped like a square. A little plaque on the wall reads ‘731’. He has no idea what it’s supposed to mean. It feels ominous all the same.

There are three doors. He tries all of them. Only the middle one opens. He’s in a room with a bed and a table, nothing else. The walls are white. There’s so much dust here.

He sits on the bed, flipping the axe over in his hands. It doesn’t feel right. There’s too much dust, he can’t breathe. He’s suffocating. The walls are too white. His head’s full of static again. It’s too white. It’s too bright in here. He can’t see anything but-

Ranboo collapses.

Faintly, as black overtakes his vision, blurring out all the white, he hears Spooky speak behind him. But it could be his imagination. It might be. He’s not conscious long enough to ponder it.

“Welcome aboard, Specimen 14. I hope you last longer than the last one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO SOME CLARIFICATIONS SINCE THIS IS THE END OF MAIN GAME AND NOW I GOTTA WORK ON KARAMARI:
> 
> 1\. Yes, the original Specimen 14 was Tommy. He will not have a particularly large role in the story, he basically existed just to get killed off for plot development.  
> 2\. It took me several weeks to finish Specimen 12's section because it's basically just a giant fetch quest and I hate it. Sorry if the writing quality fluctuates there.  
> 3\. Literally everything after Specimen 12 was written in one day, so sorry if that's shit but it's 1 AM so I don't really care.  
> 4\. Karamari Hospital promises to be a bit more fun to write, so it might come out a bit quicker. Who knows. Not me.  
> 5\. Yes, I did just skip the boss battle because I didn't know how to write it and also didn't know how to work the bad ending in without completely shoehorning it in for no reason. Sorry. Specimen 9 isn't neutralized, he's just vibing.
> 
> Some things in this chapter were intentionally confusing, because this is majorly from Ranboo's perspective and he has no idea what's going on ever.
> 
> Sorry for posting at 1:30 AM but also not sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> this was gonna be one chapter but i got tired


End file.
